Water Paper Stone : a walk-through book by Judy O'Shea

SAN FRANCISCO CENTER FOR THE BOOKSEPTEMBER 5 THROUGH DECEMBER 6, 2014

WATER PAPER STONE : A WALK-THROUGH BOOK

authored by judy o’sheain exhibition at the San Francisco Center for the Book September 5 – December 6, 2014

EXHIBITION COORDINATION

FOR SFCB

Kathleen Burch

CATALOG DESIGN Kathleen Burch

COVER PHOTOS Mike O’Shea

COPY EDITOR Samantha Hamady

PRINTING Inkworks Press Berkeley, California

ISBN 978-1-929646-08-1

2014 by the artists and the San Francisco Center for the Book

375 Rhode Island Street San Francisco, California 94103

sfcb.org

This catalog was designed using Tangent typefaces by Terminal Design. The SFCB logo was created by Studio Hinrichs.

A portion of the purchase price of this exhibition catalog helps fund the operation of the San Francisco Center for the Book, a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization.

THIS EXHIBITION MADE POSSIBLE

BY THE GENEROUS SUPPORT OF

Kahle Austin FoundationSan Francisco FoundationSan Francisco Grants for the Arts

board of directors of the san francisco center for the bookMary Austin, PresidentKathleen Burch, Vice PresidentColeen CurryAlan DyeWally JansenMary LairdMargaret MillerBrooks RoddanKathleen RydarDonna SeagerAnne SmithDuff Axsom, EmeritusCurtiss Taylor, Emeritus

sfcb staffCheryl ItamuraChad JohnsonMalgosia KosteckaAlex LinJeff ThomasLesya Westerman

exhibition committeeMary Austin, Kathleen Burch, Macy Chadwick, Sas Colby, Samantha Hamady, Jennie Hinchcliff, Chad Johnson and Alyson Kuhn; Marie Dern, honorary member

about the sfcbThe San Francisco Center for the Book, founded in 1996, is the center of inspiration for the book arts world of the West Coast, featuring the art and craft of letterpress printing, bookbinding & artists’ book making. We are dedicated to the art of the book!

The SFCB was co-founded by Mary Austin and Kathleen Burch, who recognized a growing need in San Francisco and the Bay Area for a facility specifically designed and equipped for the book arts. The first of its kind on the West Coast, the SFCB now offers over 300 workshops and many free events every year, including the annual street fair Roadworks: A Steamroller Printing Festival.

In addition to workshops and events, there is a thriving artist-in-residence program, producing numerous artists’ books every year, and collaborations with many local non-profits, museums, and libraries. The SFCB also hosts special visits and hands-on demonstrations for students of all ages, teachers, librarians, corporate team building, collectors, visiting printers, artists, writers and designers.

24 Chantal Armagnac

10 Carole Beadle

12 Richard Berger

14 Kay Bradner

16 Bernard Cauhapé

18 Catherine Choron-Baix

20 Michel Cubilié

22 Marianna Goodheart

24 François Grand-Clément

26 Sylvie Gravellard

28 Charles Hobson

30 Michel Julliard

32 Carolyn Miller

2, 34 Mike O’Shea

36 Dan Pillers

38 Jean-Michel Prêt

40 Inge Roberts

8, 44 Alice Wingwall

Judy O’Shea created the Dust Cover, Front Cover, and Back Cover of the installation.

All photographs by Mike O’Shea unless otherwise noted.

6 Dedication

7 Artist’s Statement

Judy O’Shea

8 Home Is Where the Heart Goes

An Artist’s ExperienceAlice Wingwall

48 Colophon

TA B LE O F CO NTE NTS

6

Water Paper Stone : A Walk-Through Book is dedicated to Mike O’Shea, with whom my ego, my life, and my love are safe.

He’s held our creative life together with his gentle but continual exploration of media and ideas, and his encouragement and critiques guide everything I do.

D E D I C ATI O N

7

PR E FAC E : A R TI S T ’S S TATE M E NT

Water Paper Stone : A Walk-Through Book is the final chapter of a more than seventeen-year journey of artistic exploration. In 1993, when given the opportunity to return to school for a master’s degree in fine art, I chose instead to invite artists, mostly professors, to stay and work with me and my husband, Mike, at the eighteenth-century watermill that we had restored in the Aveyron department of France. For over seventeen years, we hosted American and French artists at La Pilande Basse, which sits in a steep canyon with the Mousse River rushing past and through its stone walls.

Instead of professors observing me, I was able to observe them, so I not only learned technique but experienced a wide variety of artistic approaches. I learned to trust my instincts; that aesthetic decisions are arbitrary, not absolute; that the complexity of a work is the culmination of solving problems in its making; that if the integrity of the idea is solid, the work will follow, and that a work of art can be perfect in its imperfection. The most important lesson, however, was that we all stand on the shoulders of other artists, and when we come together, the result is true synergy, as in this walk-through book.

When invited to write a chapter or page, each of the other eighteen artists created original work that relates to their experience at the mill. Just as the heart of our experience in France was our rapport with guest artists, their contributions form the pages of this artists’ book.

J U DY O’S H E A

8

H OM E I S W H E R E TH E H E A R T G O E S :

A N A R TI S T ’S E X PE R I E N C E

I stand just inside the very tall windows of the mill room, grasping the long handle of the right glass panel to open the window. The roar of the river rapids rushes in, and at least one handful of words falls forward over the sill, down toward the rapids, falling among the boulders. The words are all French, falling from my mouth as I gasp at the plunging of the water. I try to catch some words, to return them to my mouth and ears, like grabbing for potato chips.

Water, and the sound of its falling, had surrounded my working, and sleeping, and eating for a total of eight weeks over six years. In my workroom in the lower barn, words hovered, even in the silence of wrapping and coloring and drawing. Letters paraded silently on upper beams and ledges, whispering together to form words, sometimes huddled over my shoulders, sometimes curling around these shoulders to listen to what I was writing, one letter after another, on the seat of one chair or another.

Laundry tubs and a toilet lined one wall of the barn workroom, and tool storage and supplies covered one more wall beyond my large work table, where rolls of cord, cloth, plastic garden ground covers, and cutting tools littered the surface. Around this table stood several plastic chairs, filled with linen rope, rocks and letters, waiting for my transformations of them. And the words whispering and parading and dancing their shapes into sounds, shaped the room as much as did the walls and laundry tubs. Yes, sounds and the sound of language had made this barn workspace mine. The sound of words and the sound of rushing waters encircled my imagining and my formations.

A LI C E W I N GWA LL

10

C A RO LE B E A D LE

Interchange

2014

Stitched and burned silk

40” x 60” x 30” (two pieces)

12

R I C H A R D B E RG E R

Working Drawings for Floor at La Pilande Basse

Floor tiles 1998

Vellum panels 2014

40” x 60” (four pieces)

Four vellum drawings used in locating and transferring thumb print images of Mike and Judy O’Shea to a tile floor.

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14

K AY B R A D N E R

26 days @ La Pilande Basse

2014

Intaglio: drypoint, aquatint, engraving, photogravure printed a la poupee

Size including frame: 36” x 70” x 18”

Page size: 37” x 11” with 26 pages

The 26 banner pages hang on a wooden frame and represent the 26 days of Kay’s visit to La Pilande Basse in 1999.

The engraved text and drawings chronicle people and places visited, landscapes drawn, meals enjoyed.

This one-of-a-kind book was printed on paper made by Judy O’Shea.

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16

B E R N A R D C AU H A PÉ

17

Et que la vie sorte des livres (Antonin Artaud)(And so books come to life)

2014

Paper, ink, acrylic, tape

275” x 12”

Transparence des mots, images que nous donnons les textes

(Transparent words, the images that we give to texts)

18

C ATH E R I N E C H O RO N - BA I X

From Daudet to Judy

2014

Calligraphy

100” x 20”

Livre accordéon, calligraphié

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20

M I C H E L CU B I LI É Sans titre 2014 Acrylic on paper 69” x 40”

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22

M A R I A N N A G OO D H E A R T

Ricordare I & II

1997

Ricordare I: Two hanging panels

Chalk pastels52” x 55”Two chalk pastel rubbings of the stone walls in the studio/barn at La Pilande Basse

2014

Ricordare II: One hanging screen with three panels Mixed materials 27” x 36” x 16”Hanging screen of three panels with chalk pastel inserts

Photographs: Jay Daniel

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F R A N ÇO I S G R A N D - C LÉ M E NT | C H A NTA L A R M AG N AC

Like a Wheel of a Watermill2014

PVC expansé, bois de cyprès, Altuglas, papier

6’ x 4.5’ x 1’

The mobile is composed of two pairs of triple spirals, each pair having opposing rotating planes reflecting light in different ways.

The spirals are weighted by octahedron stars in cypress wood.

In the interior of each pair, encircling the axis, is another spiral in paper, on which text by Chantal Armagnac is written in French for one, in English for the other.

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26

S Y LV I E G R AV E LL A R D

Cum-crescere, croître ensemble(Coming together, growing together)

2014

Banner: mixed media, ceramic, paper, textile, India ink

11.5’ x 12”

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28

C H A R LE S H O B SO N

Matisse’s Fishing Pole2014

Canvas, acrylic, knitting needles, digital images, paint brush, Fabriano paper

14” x 14” x 2”

Matisse’s Fishing Pole is a scroll book built inside a stretched canvas with a French door binding, covered boards and sewn pages.

Images on the scroll are of the swimming area at Trésbas-les-Bains, a small riverside village near Plaisance, where Mike & Judy O’Shea’s mill, La Pilande Basse, was located.

Images on the French door pages are paintings of bathers by Matisse that he made between 1909 and 1914. They are a counterpoint to the scroll images of bathers at Trésbas.

Photographs: Charles Hobson

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30

M I C H E L J U LLI A R D

Untitled2014

Acrylic and wood block on paper

11.5’ x 3’

32

C A RO LY N M I LLE R

La Pilande Basse2014

Watercolor

7” x 118”

Illustrated poem Accordion-fold artist’s book

33

34

M I K E O’S H E A

The Spine2014

Mixed Media

(Cyanotype also shown as frontispiece, page 2)

20’ x 7’

For over seventeen years I lived in a watermill in France.

The restoration of the mill-works was a major part of my work there, along with working with guest artists from the U.S. and France.

The spine of this walk-through book is an homage to that body of work.

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36

DA N PI LLE R S

37

From My Journal2014

Etched glass, wood

16” x 16” x 3”

Thirteen-page book with etched glass pages.

Photographs: Dan Pillers

38

J E A N - M I C H E L PR Ê T

A Beautiful History of a Happy Land2014

8.66’ x 2.75’

Six sheets of aquarell paper, folded and superposed with drawing recto / verso.

Prêt is a ceramic artist, painter, and interior space designer, who lives and works in the Aveyron department in France.

He and Mike O’Shea collaborated for several years using printing techniques developed by O’Shea and ways of sculpting ceramics perfected by Prêt culminating in several major shows in France.

39

I N G E RO B E R T S

42

Embroidered Dreams2014

Porcelain, water colors, charcoal Imprinted, stained porcelain (fired to cone 10 in oxidation); rubber, steel

6’ x 6’ x 2”

Nine porcelain pillows using impressions of French linens on one side and a German game, Mühle (or Mill) drawn on the back. Scattered on the floor below this “page” are nine blue and nine white game pieces.

Photographs: Michael Stadler

I N G E RO B E R T S

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44

A LI C E W I N GWA LL

La Pilande Basse; Pages Bound by Chairs with Orange Clamps2014

Plastic chairs, drawings, photo books, postcards, and clamps plus leashed stone-carved ram

36” x 57” x 24”

Plastic chairs returned from the mill and assembled with others to hold drawing and photo books bound to the ensemble by clips and cords, awaiting imagination

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TH I S WA LK-TH RO U G H BOO K is an edition of one, dated September 2014, by nineteen American and French artists, writers, and poets.

Each page contains references to the artists’ experience while visiting La Pilande Basse in the Aveyron department of France, and was produced uniquely for this one-of-a-kind artists’ book.

The front cover is of hand-cast kozo fibers, first formed into fifteen eighteen-foot sheets, then blasted with water to form waves of paper.

The paper was then splashed and exposed to the sun with a cyanotype light-sensitive treatment, forming paper, which was then transformed into the floating wall of stones, the back cover.

Buried in the stone wall are the last two paragraphs of the printed book.

Each page in between has its own special story.

A special thanks goes to the San Francisco Center for the Book for sponsoring this installation.

J U DY O’S H E A

CO LO PH O N